Program Design #3: Exercise Choice, Part 2

Do you know there are 20 possible opening chess moves? And the number goes up drastically from there each subsequent move. Choice, it can be overwhelming! And it is just as overwhelming for someone entering a gym for the first time or thinking about starting a home routine.

Let’s continue talking about Exercise Choice. This is a continuation of Part 1 where we discussed your level of experience, goals, an exercises effectiveness and personal preference. Today we will be discussing frequency, equipment available, and injuries and how they shape which exercise you will pick during your training session.

Frequency

When you hope to perform an exercise, you should ask yourself when was the last time I did this exercise? And how did I do it last time? Your body needs rest from similar movement patterns. For example, if you destroyed your legs with 5 sets of 10 on back squats on Monday, attempting to squats of any type on Tuesday would be a mistake. Now some walking may be in order to promote blood flow and alleviate some stiffness/soreness. But otherwise, you want to let yourself heal.

Exercise can be part of the healing process. Therefore, continuing with the above scenario, if you wanted to perform some bodyweight squats on Wednesday to further promote blood flow and healing that would likely be acceptable but likely are not ready for a hard workout yet. Could you attack your legs from a different angle on Wednesday? Sure, if all you did on Monday was squats, then on Wednesday it could be useful to do some deadlifts or leg curls to target the backside of your legs.

To recap: the harder you hit an exercise, the greater rest you need before you perform that specific exercise and similar movement patters. Soreness will be a fairly good indicator of whether or not to repeat an exercise or movement pattern. If you are still sore to the touch or very sore simply doing regular movement, it would be best to continue to rest from that movement. If you are only slightly sore and you have to really stretch or contract hard to feel the soreness, then you are likely healed enough to repeat a movement. However, at this point it could be useful to hit the movement with a slightly different rep range or exercise.

Equipment Available

Are you in a mega gym with equipment out the wazoo? Or is your gym a bit more sparse?

Or do you work out at home?

This will obviously impact your exercise choice. You will be more likely to repeat exercises if you are working out at home unless you have spent a considerable amount on home gym equipment. You will likely have many options at the mega gym, but with those options often comes a crowd. And a crowd may often mean that you have to made adjustments to your training plan. Hope to get on the leg extension machine but they are all taken? Maybe some no lockout goblet squats are in order. Hoping to perform barbell bench press but it is Monday and there is a line of 13 people waiting for each bench. Maybe dumbbell flat bench or a machine press will have to do.

Go to the gym with a plan, but be prepared with some sensible modifications. At home you may not have to make modifications, but you will have to be creative.

Injuries

Does your workout plan call for three separate days; push, pull and legs? But you hurt your shoulder at work and pressing even 5 pounds is painful. There is no need to push ahead (see what I did there) with your plan to do a push day when your shoulder is aching.

Provided you are still able to be active in other ways, you will not magically lose all of your muscle or conditioning. Could you lose some pushing strength if you take a few weeks or months off of pushing? Sure, but it’s not the end of the world. Would you rather take a few weeks off and heal? Or keep pushing through (I did it again) the pain of the injury and never completely heal? Every workout being painful and living on ibuprofen day to day?

Be smart, avoid exercises that aggravate injuries. However, maybe in this example you are able to do pulling exercises. Pulling exercises will also work your shoulders to an extent. Go ahead do them. There is no rule that says if your shoulder is hurting keep it immobile for months. It may be a good idea to incorporate as much pain free motion that you can handle.

Recap: Follow physicians orders, do not aggravate existing injuries, do what you can pain free.

However, if you look like the frog below, then maybe you had just better avoid the gym for awhile?

That wraps up today’s blog. Are there other factors that influence exercise choice? Let me know if you feel I missed one. Stay tuned for more entries in the Program Design series.